


Making a Home

by Buffintruder



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Found Family, Gen, Post-Canon, Roommates, adjusting to living with three people, and they were ROOMMATES, but have also had a total of like 10 conversations with, ptolemy and nathaniel are alive and there is no explanation, who you would die for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-24 01:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21330169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buffintruder/pseuds/Buffintruder
Summary: Post PG roommate shenanigans
Relationships: Bartimaeus & Kitty Jones, Bartimaeus & Ptolemy (Bartimaeus), Kitty Jones & Nathaniel, Kitty Jones & Ptolemy
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26
Collections: Bartimaeus Fic Exchange 2019





	Making a Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shadowy_Dumbo_Octopus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowy_Dumbo_Octopus/gifts).

> I had the song Making a Home from Falsettos stuck in my head the entire time I wrote this, despite it being the opposite tone of this fic. I really should have named this after Home from AVPS, but I couldn’t find any lines in that song that worked well as a title.

Kitty had just placed her last folded shirt into the drawer when she heard Nathaniel’s voice ring out from down the stairs, “What is this?!”

Wondering what kind of problem could have arisen this soon into their new living arrangements, she pushed open the door of her room a little wider, poking her head out to hear better.

“I’m making dinner, obviously,” Bartimaeus said, and Kitty’s bemusement grew. She had smelled various spices and vegetables and heard pans clanging and knives chopping while she had been unpacking, but nothing about it had seemed far out of the ordinary, beyond the fact that the last time someone had cooked a meal for her had probably sometime when she was fourteen.

Curious to see what the fuss was about, she edged closer to the stairs.

“ _ This  _ is not dinner,” Nathaniel said from where he was standing in the hallway, a suitcase in one hand and a box at his feet. “This is a  _ mess _ . How many were you even cooking for?!”

Even though she was not in the habit of taking Nathaniel’s side over Bartimaeus, Kitty had to admit he had a point. The kitchen, which had been spotless and empty earlier that morning was covered in various smears and spills, and the table and counter was covered with more plates of food than a house of three humans could eat in a week. She hadn’t even realized they owned that many plates. It did smell delicious though, Kitty thought.

“Look, I’ve only ever cooked at feasts and stuff,” Bartimaeus snapped. “I miscalculated the portions a bit.”

A muffled giggle escaped Ptolemy, and Bartimaeus’s expression immediately softened into something almost pouty.

“We could always use leftovers,” Kitty said. “Since I can’t cook and I rather doubt that either of you rich boys know how to even turn on a stove. If there’s too much for it all to last, we can always freeze some of it.”

“Exactly!” Bartimaeus said. “Kitty’s right. Listen to her.”

Nathaniel eyed Bartimaeus dubiously. “That still doesn’t explain the mess.”

“He was trying to show off,” Ptolemy said, not quite hiding a grin.

“I was not!” Bartimaeus protested, scandalized, though there was still a strange tenderness in his eyes as he looked at Ptolemy. Kitty had a feeling that Ptolemy could blow up this new house they had worked so hard to find, and Bartimaeus still wouldn’t lose that softness.

“You were flipping the pan and flinging ingredients into a bowl from across the room,” Ptolemy said, making an overhand tossing motion. “Half the time it failed, of course.”

Bartimaeus scoffed, opening his mouth to say something.

“You know what, I don’t need to hear the details, I still need to finish moving in,” Nathaniel said, turning back towards the front door. Kitty thought she glimpsed a small smile on his face, like it didn’t quite know what it was doing there. “Can someone help carry all my stuff?”

“Sure,” Kitty said, because she didn’t have anything better to do, and a part of her vaguely felt like as the two normal humans in the household, they should stick together. Not that either of them were really normal humans though, she thought as they headed outside to his car. Nathaniel was the one surviving minister of a collapsed government, the only person who had brought a spirit into his body and survived; and Kitty was a terrorist-turned revolutionary who had gone to another dimension and come back more-or-less intact. Just because neither of them had come back from the dead didn’t make them normal.

“Thanks,” Nathaniel said a little awkwardly as he handed her a heavy box. Kitty wondered how often he had said that before, but she pushed the thought away. It seemed rather mean, and Nathaniel was trying his best.

As they turned back inside, Kitty cast around for something to say. Conversation should have been easier than this, part of her thought. They had lived through a coup and then saved the world together. Why was talking hard? “How was the drive?”

“Fine,” Nathaniel said, and a beat of silence followed. “Um. It was a bit rainy. And I only got my driver’s license last month, so it was a bit nerve-wracking at times, but otherwise it was fine. Bartimaeus brought you and Ptolemy up right?”

“Yeah, remind me never to ride a flying horse again,” Kitty said, struggling to maintain a good grip on her box. It had been fine when she first grabbed hold of it, but now the edges were digging into the angles of her fingers. Although she had mostly recovered from her trip to the Other Place in the weeks that had passed, her strength was not what it once was, which made it worse.Trying not to drop it as she carried it up the stairs, she adjusted the weight onto different parts of her hands.

“That’s what he did? He could carry all your stuff with you? Did anyone notice?”

Kitty nudged open the door of the only unclaimed room left. “Is there anywhere you want me to put this? I hope you’re fine with Ptolemy and I choosing our rooms first.”

“Wherever’s good,” Nathaniel said, dropping his two duffle bags on the ground. “And yeah, it’s fine.”

“Anyway, we came pretty early in the morning, I don’t think it was light enough to see us,” Kitty said. “It’s not like magician’s spies are watching London or the countryside anymore. And he carried us all fine, you’re the only one with actual stuff to bring. Ptolemy didn’t have anything, and I’m broke and only just came out of hiding.”

“Right,” Nathaniel said a little uncomfortably. “Where did you get all the kitchen stuff then?”

“We went on a shopping run a couple hours ago,” Kitty said. “Ptolemy and Bart set up the kitchen, and I did everything else except your room and the attic. I’d just finished unpacking my stuff when you came in. We’ll still need to go shopping for more furniture and such tomorrow though.”

“Okay,” Nathaniel said, handing her a pile of suits in neat plastic bags from the backseat of his car. “‘Bart’?”

Kitty shrugged as best she could with her arms full. “Yeah, haven’t you noticed how Ptolemy always avoids using his real name? It seemed more polite? I don’t know.”

“I didn’t notice,” Nathaniel admitted. “But I guess you’ve spent more time with them than I have.”

“Yeah,” Kitty said, and they fell silent. They didn’t talk for the next couple trips, but she was getting out of breath from walking up and down stairs with all that weight, so she didn’t mind. It felt less awkward by this point anyway, the lack of words less pressing.

“Wait a second,” Bartimaeus was saying as Kitty came downstairs after dropping the last load of luggage into Nathaniel’s room. “I thought there were three bedrooms on the second floor. Why did you get a place with an attic this big? You don’t need that extra room.”

“It took you this long to realize that?” Ptolemy asked, sounding rather amused.

“I was still in the Other Place when you picked this place,” Bartimaeus said.

“There’s four of us,” Ptolemy said a little slowly, gesturing between himself and Bartimaeus.

“Yeah, but I don’t—” Bartimaeus stopped. “The attic is for me?”

Kitty walked into the room. “Why wouldn’t you have a room?”

Bartimaeus gave her a weird look. “I don’t need to sleep. And I won’t spend all my time here.”

“So?” Kitty said. “We assumed you’d hang around here enough that you’d want your own space.”

Bartimaeus stared at her.

From the doorway of the kitchen, Nathaniel laughed. “I didn’t think anything could leave you at a loss for words.”

Instantly, Bartimaeus dropped his stunned expression. “Shut up. Go eat some food that I made.”

Nathaniel snorted, and Kitty saw him duck his head slightly to hide the faintest traces of a smile.

“This is your home too,” Ptolemy said, briefly leaning his head on Bartimaeus’s shoulder.

“Right,” Bartimaeus said, his voice cracking. Very quietly, he added, “I don’t think I’ve had a home before.”

Kitty’s life was different, of course, and she hadn’t experienced the level of control by magicians that Bartimaeus had, but it was a sentiment she could relate too. Between her distant parents and life of rebellion, she didn’t think there had ever been any place she had felt the warmth and comfort the word “home” implied.

“Now you do,” Ptolemy said softly, and Kitty hoped it would be true for all of them.

* * *

In some ways, Kitty thought this house was a sort of a dream come true. Nathaniel, with all his money from his time as a magician, had bought this place, which meant she no longer had to worry about rent or annoying her landlord or her lease running out. She was safe, and for the first time in her entire life, she felt somewhat secure in her future.

A demon, a terrorist, a magician, and a dead boy living together had the potential for a lot of awkwardness, and Kitty had caught flashes of all of their uncertainty over their first dinner that night, the strange pauses in conversation from too much history of pain and not enough of familiarity. But at the same time, they felt like people who could grow to become her friends, and there was a certain reassurance in knowing that she was surrounded by allies she could trust. It had been a long time since she last had a group like that.

But despite all the ways her life here was looking hopeful, it was still a new bed in a strange house, and despite how late it was, Kitty could not make herself fall asleep.

After about an hour, she finally gave up and decided to go downstairs. The change in scenery might help, and even if it didn’t, at least it was something else to do than lie in bed and stare at the unfamiliar ceiling.

The lights were on in the living room, a low glow creeping down the hallway along with faintly muffled voices.

“And I was angry at you, too,” Bartimaeus said, almost inaudible over the distance. “I didn’t want you to send me away. I wanted to stay with you until the end. I would have, gladly.”

Kitty froze, not wanting to interrupt.

“You were so much more than me,” Ptolemy said, a little louder but no less tender. “You’ve lived thousands of times longer than your time with me. I was just a blip in your life. I couldn’t take the rest of that away from you.”

This wasn’t something Kitty was supposed to be hearing, she thought, one foot already edging back to the stair it had just left. But she didn’t want to go back to bed yet either. Should she interrupt them, so she could stay downstairs without eavesdropping?

“Don’t pretend that you could possibly mean so little to me,” Bartimaeus said. “In all my five thousand years, not one thing since my creation impacted me as much those two years with you did.”

Kitty changed her mind. She definitely absolutely did not want to interrupt, no matter how bored and lonely she was feeling. The two of them clearly had stuff to work out. They had history, with all the love and issues that came with that, and before today, Kitty had had less than ten conversations combined with them.

For a moment she felt like an outsider in her own house, practically a stranger in the face of the strong bond between Bartimaeus and Ptolemy. But Kitty pushed the notion out of her mind as she crept back up the stairs. She might not be particularly close to either of them now, but she was living with them now. There was plenty of time for that to change.

* * *

Between helping Nathaniel unpack his stuff and going out to buy everything they realized they didn’t already have, the next day was full of walking around store aisles and lugging furniture up stairs. There was no time for anything else, and Kitty collapsed into her bed that night, exhaustion crashing down on her.

The next morning, Kitty went downstairs for some breakfast and found Nathaniel eating a slice of toast in a suit.

“What’s with the fancy get up?” she asked.

“Job interview,” he said.

“This soon?” Kitty asked. They hadn’t even finished settling into this house yet, and she was sure Nathaniel hadn’t fully recovered from saving the world and watching his society crumble only three weeks ago.

“Might as well,” Nathaniel said with a shrug. “I need something to keep me occupied.”

Part of Kitty could understand that. Even though at the moment, all she wanted was some time to rest after the stress she had been through for more years than she could remember, she had experienced that restlessness before. “What kind of job?”

Nathaniel shifted slightly. “Art teacher.”

Kitty blinked. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting exactly, since Nathaniel’s past experience of being a magician wouldn’t feed directly into many other jobs, but it hadn’t been that. “Are you qualified?”

“Not really,” Nathaniel said. “But I have a decent hand, and there was an ad about it in the newspaper that said they’d be willing to spend some time training the teaching side of things. So might as well, you know? Better than sitting around here doing nothing.”

Had being a magician instilled Nathaniel with a confidence that the world would bend for him and others would do as he wanted, despite all logical reasoning? Kitty wondered with some fascination. “Good luck,” she said.

“Good luck with what?” Ptolemy asked from the stairs. Bartimaeus stood next to him, one arm slung casually over his shoulders.

“I’m applying for a job,” Nathaniel said.

“Well, have fun, I came down here to announce my departure,” Bartimaeus said. “I’ve been on this plane for too long.”

“How long should I wait before calling you back?” Ptolemy asked.

Bartimaeus hesitated. “A couple weeks? I don’t want to leave you alone for long.”

“I’ll be fine,” Ptolemy promised. “But you are in need of a lot of rest, my friend. Maybe you should stay there longer and recover all the way.”

“You could come back for frequent, short visits instead,” Kitty suggested when Bartimaeus looked like he was about to protest. “So you can rest a lot while still not missing too much.”

“It would be draining for Ptolemy to summon me so often,” Bartimaeus said.

“Well, I’m not saying everyday,” Kitty said. Her experience of summoning Bartimaeus that one time had been exhausting for her, but she knew that a fair portion of that could be attributed to how he had torn apart her dreams of uniting their kinds. Magicians had summoned spirits frequently for ages, and especially because Ptolemy wouldn’t have to fight Bartimaeus on it, Kitty was sure that once every few days wouldn’t be too hard to manage.

“I could also switch off with him if it gets to be too much,” Nathaniel said.

“I’d prefer not,” Bartimaeus said, more sharply than Kitty had expected. Everyone turned to look at him. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, but... not now.”

Nathaniel nodded, his eyes fixed firmly on the ground. “Sorry,” he said in a small voice. “I didn’t think...”

There were clearly issues the two of them needed to work out, but that was for them to figure out, and Kitty didn’t want to touch that. “You’re not the only other person who can summon him,” she said, a little dryly.

“Yeah, okay, that works,” Bartimaeus said.

Kitty glanced at Nathaniel, but he didn’t seem particularly bothered by Bartimaeus preferring to be summoned by an unpracticed commoner over him.

“Well, that’s settled then,” Kitty said, and went back to eating her breakfast.

* * *

The house had never been particularly loud, not compared to Kitty’s old apartment with sounds of London traffic filling in the empty spaces and people above her who always seemed to be stomping and the lady across the hall who often sang in the evenings. Still, she had not realized how much background noise Nathaniel and Bartimaeus made until they were both gone.

After Bartimaeus’s dismissal, she and Ptolemy had gone to their own rooms, and she hadn’t thought too much about it. But now, lunchtime had come, and she found herself awkwardly sitting across the table from him as they ate leftovers in this too silent house. 

She had spent a long time studying and trying to understand Ptolemy in the past, but only as a half-forgotten historical figure, not as a real person she could talk to. She had not spent much time with him since he had come back, and never without Bartimaeus there. They had a lot in common, but somehow that currently was outweighed by all their vast differences, and Kitty could not think of a single interesting topic of conversation.

Eventually, she settled for a less interesting one, just to stop the pressing stillness. “How are you settling in?”

“Um. Quite good, I think,” Ptolemy said. “It’s... been a lot to get used to. But I’m grateful.”

This wouldn’t get them anywhere, Kitty thought. But she wasn’t willing to give up yet. “The modern technology isn’t too weird?”

Ptolemy shrugged. “Someday, I will have to learn how electricity works because the mechanics make little sense to me, but there is nothing as a concept that is too mind-blowing.”

“Ah,” Kitty said, unsure what she could say in response to that. 

Fortunately, just breaking the silence seemed to have been good enough because after a moment, Ptolemy asked, “Do you have any plans on what to do in the future? Bartimaeus said you spent a long time working for commoner rights, but you don’t seem to be doing anything with the new government.”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Kitty said. She had been fighting for something like this new government for so long that she didn’t know what to do now that it was here, even though she knew the fight was not over, that there was still injustice to fight. She wanted a break, a chance to educate herself so she could visualize what a better world might look like, but she didn’t know how or what she would do afterwards. “Maybe learn more about spirits and stuff. Try to continue the stuff I started. What about you? I can’t see you going to public school.”

Ptolemy laughed. “No, I’m probably going to try to complete that book I wanted to write. It’ll be hard because a lot of my notes have been lost, but maybe that’s for the best. Bartimaeus told me what people have done with my work that did survive.”

“What did they do?” Kitty asked. She hadn’t heard of anything being done with Ptolemy’s research besides what she had done, but she was hardly a historian.

“You know, magicians trying to force their way into the Other Place and take the power for themselves, and that kind of thing,” Ptolemy said. “They failed, obviously, and nothing much came out of it, but I do worry about how other things I wrote about to improve human-spirit relations could have been used badly.”

Somehow, this wasn’t what Kitty had expected from Ptolemy. She had only ever seen him as an idealistic and idealized person, frozen in someone else’s memory; never as this flawed person whose actions sometimes had consequences he did not intend, who learned from his mistakes and grew more jaded. It was reassuring in a way, but also scary to look back and think about how much Bartimaeus had seemed to place on one imperfect boy.

“But you’re going to try again?” Kitty asked.

“Yes,” Ptolemy said. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet, but I will put information into the world that will be used for good and can’t be easily misused.”

Kitty thought about it for a moment. “Then I guess my goal will be to push the world into a state where it might be a little more ready to accept what you have to say. Since I assume you don’t have as much experience with changing political systems as I do.” Admittedly a lot of her attempts had not worked particularly well, but at least she knew what not to do. And she had an in with Britain’s current government which would be useful.

“It’ll be a learning experience for us both!” Ptolemy grinned at her, eyes shining, and Kitty was hit with the strange realization that although he had been born thousands of years before her, he had still lived less years than her and in some way or another, he seemed to look up to her. She had never been a role model before, especially not to someone who had inspired her greatest achievement, but she was filled with the sudden desire to get her life together so she wouldn’t let him down.

“We might even be able to rope Bart and Nathaniel into it,” Kitty said, half-smiling. She still didn’t know what she wanted to do in the future, but at least she had one other person to do it with, and that was a surprising amount of comfort. In the past few years, she had grown used to doing everything alone, but there had been a reason she had once loved being part of the Resistance. “I mean Bart said it was pointless to help me before, but that was before I went to the Other Place, and now you’re on my side too.”

Ptolemy laughed. “I had a hard time of convincing him too, but between the two of us, I’m sure nothing can stand in our way.”

There was that feeling again, a shaky sort of awe at having someone believe in her. “We are two of a kind,” Kitty said. “If anyone can, it’s us.”

* * *

“So,” Bartimaeus said, stepping over the crack in the summoning circle with a casualness that didn’t seem fake necessarily, but definitely looked intentional. “What did I miss?”

“Hello,” Nathaniel said a little awkwardly. “Not a huge amount. Are you more rested?”

“Eh, not at my full strength or anything,” Bartimaeus said.

“We should probably stick to very short visits until you’ve fully recovered,” Ptolemy said.

“I’m fine,” Bartimaeus said, waving his hand. “I don’t want to miss out on all the stuff going on.”

Part of Kitty couldn’t help but think about when Bartimaeus had told her about Ptolemy’s death and how he seemed to blame himself for it, and she wondered how much of Bartimaeus’s desire to stay was about that. When she had summoned him before and he had briefly thought she was Nathaniel, he seemed pretty pissed to have his rest interrupted, though of course that was a very different situation. Either way, it was hardly fair that Bartimaeus couldn’t choose when to come and go, even around his friends, and Kitty wondered if there was some way around that.

“Well, you didn’t miss out on too much,” Ptolemy said. “Except we discovered that none of us know how to cook, so after we finished leftovers, we’ve been mostly relying on take out...” He looked at Bartimaeus, his eyebrows raised hopefully.

“Fine,” Bartimaeus muttered, rolling his eyes. “I’ll make some more stuff. You all really need to learn how to take care of yourselves.”

“I already learned how to chop up vegetables from last time,” Ptolemy said.

“And it’s not like you know how to make decent portions,” Nathaniel muttered.

“I’ll learn how to make meal sized portions once you learn how to cook, since it seems like you’ll have nothing to eat but my leftovers otherwise,” Bartimaeus shot back. “But none of you have answered my question. Did you get that job, Nat?”

“What?” Nathaniel asked, staring at him blankly for a beat. “Oh yeah, no, but I did get accepted into an art school. I’m starting next semester.”

Bartimaeus seemed to pause. “Huh. Art? I didn’t expect you to actually follow up on that.”

“Yeah. Well.” Nathaniel shrugged. “My art tutor when I was younger was one of the only people who were nice to me, and it’s probably the only thing I can do that’s not related to being a magician. Plus I like it.”

“I was going to tell him that skills can transfer over to other professions, but I didn’t want to crush his dreams,” Kitty said dryly.

“His dreams have been crushed enough already,” Ptolemy agreed, nodding solemnly. “What with his government collapsing and him realizing he did have some morality after all.”

Nathaniel rolled his eyes. “This is what’s changed since you left. They’ve both teamed up and started ganging up on me.”

“Well, don’t expect help from me,” Bartimaeus said with a snort. “Making fun of you is my favorite past time.”

“Or you could get an actual hobby,” Nathaniel said.

“I’ll do that once you learn how to function as an adult without djinn like me helping you every step of the way,” Bartimaeus said. Then he made a face. “Ugh. I’m going to have to be the one to teach you all how to cook, aren’t I.”

“There’s not really anyone else,” Ptolemy said, and it seemed ridiculous for a boundary-smashing ancient historical magician to be making puppy eyes, but Kitty really had no other term for the look he was giving Bartimaeus.

Bartimaeus groaned. “ _ Fine _ . But we need to go shopping first.”

“We could go now,” Kitty said. “It’s not like we have anything else that needs to be done.”

“Why not,” Bartimaeus muttered.

* * *

“Ah, this takes me back,” Bartimaeus said as Nathaniel began driving down the road away from their house. “The last time I was in a car in a human shape was that whole Lovelace affair. You were practically a baby back then, Nat.”

“Don’t remind me,” Nathaniel muttered.

“The Lovelace affair?” Kitty asked. The only Lovelace she knew was the magician, back from her Resistance days, but he had apparently tried to kill the government in some coup or something and died as a result.

“I’ll tell the story later,” Nathaniel said. “Too much traumatic backstory for a short car ride to the grocery store.”

They arrived barely a minute later, and once inside, Kitty took a moment to look around. She had already been here a couple of times, but during those trips, she had ignored the grocery section in favor of canned and frozen foods. 

“Okay,” Bartimaeus said. “How many of you here know how to pick out vegetables.”

The three of them stared blankly at him.

“I mean, I can point out a broccoli or carrot or whatever,” Kitty said. “I’ve eaten them before. I’m not completely ignorant.”

“You all are hopeless,” Bartimaeus said with a sigh. “Okay, follow me.” He began walking towards the fresh produce section.

“We need a cart,” Kitty pointed out.

“What? Bartimaeus said, then looked where she was gesturing. “Oh. Well, the street markets I’m used to don’t come with carts.”

“This seems more convenient though,” Ptolemy said.

“Yeah, well, this store is a pile of limp plants compared to the huge selection I could choose from in—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kitty said and went off to get a cart. In nearly all of the few conversations she had had with Bartimaeus, he seemed to drop at least one reference to something grand and famous from some long gone civilization. Then again, her grandfather had often been like that, comparing everything to his past and going off on wild tangents, and Bartimaeus was about seventy times older than that. Maybe she was getting off lucky with him only doing it a couple times every conversation.

When she caught back up to the group with the cart, they had moved to stand next to the onions.

“You have to pick out onions that are still firm,” Bartimaeus was saying. He picked one up and gently squished it before handing it to Nathaniel. “See? Like this? Now we’ll need about twenty of these.”

“Please,” Nathaniel begged as he passed the onion onto Ptolemy. “Can’t you just halve the recipe or something? You always brag about how fast your thoughts are, you can do basic division.”

“Fine,” Bartimaeus said with a little sniff. “ _ Ten  _ onions.”

The next hour passed in much the same vein, the group moving from vegetable to vegetable and eventually onto spices and meat while Bartimaeus talked in great detail about everything he knew about cooking with each item. Kitty remembered the first few in pretty good detail and instantly forgot everything else the moment they moved on.

“What are all these?” Ptolemy asked as they passed some baked goods on their way to the check out aisle.

“Garbage,” Bartimaeus said, brushing right past them.

“For someone who doesn’t eat, you sure are a food snob,” Ptolemy said, not hiding his smile remotely.

“ _ Look _ , just because I don’t eat doesn’t mean I can’t have opinions,” Bartimaeus said emphatically, and Kitty instantly tuned the rest of his rant out.

Nathaniel leaned in close toward Kitty. “We need to come back here when Bart is back in the Other Place and have Ptolemy try all of this.”

“Agreed,” Kitty muttered back. They had discovered how much Ptolemy enjoyed sweets when Kitty brought back some chocolate from a shopping trip a few days ago, and she was sure that watching Ptolemy experience all these new treats would be a lot of fun.

As they entered a check out line, a voice from behind them called out, “Oh, hey, Nathaniel!”

The four of them spun around.

“Hello, Hedvika,” Nathaniel said, blinking at her in surprise. “I didn’t expect to run into you here.” He turned back toward the rest of the group. “I met her my second day here, and she helped me pick out some furniture.”

“Oh, the sofa you brought back? You have good taste,” Bartimaeus said approvingly to Hedvika as he began placing their food on the conveyor belt.

“Uh, thanks,” Hedvika said. “Sorry, who are you?”

“They’re my, uh, roommates,” Nathaniel said. “Kitty, Ptolemy, and—”

“Rekhyt,” Bartimaeus interrupted.

Hedvika looked at them, and Kitty was suddenly aware of how strange it was for a twenty-something looking guy, two eighteen year olds, and a fourteen year old to all be living together in a house. Especially when one of the eighteen year olds also sort of looked like an old woman. “Sounds like there’s a story behind that.”

Nathaniel shrugged uncomfortably. “Not really. We all just wanted to move out of London and happened to know each other.”

“Right,” Hedvika said, not looking entirely convinced.

The cashier had reached their items now and began scanning their dozens of vegetables.

“I prefer haggling over this,” Bartimaeus muttered as he watched the proceedings.

“You planning on hosting a dinner party or something?” Hedvika asked.

“No, B—Rekhyt here is the only one who knows how to cook, and he apparently can’t do regular sized proportions,” Nathaniel said. “Would you believe that this is actually half the amount he initially wanted to get?”

She snorted. “Okay, so is everyone in your house as weird as you?”

Nathaniel looked vaguely offended, but before he could say anything, Ptolemy chimed in. “Yep, pretty much.”

“You seem like a fun bunch. If you ever do have a dinner party, please invite me over,” Hedvika said.

“Oh, okay,” Nathaniel said, looking a little surprised.

“I mean—don’t feel pressured,” she added quickly.

“No, I just didn’t expect—I’d be happy to have you over, if...?” he glanced around at the rest of them.

“Sure,” Bartimaeus said. “Maybe if we actually have more people over Nat will stop complaining about my proportions.”

“Yeah, it’d be fun,” Kitty said. She couldn’t remember the last time she had talked to a girl her age for the purpose of being social.

“Your total is one eighty nine,” the cashier said looking a little annoyed, and Kitty realized none of them had noticed him finish packing away their groceries.

“Oh, sorry!” Nathaniel said hastily reaching for his wallet.

“Well, it was nice meeting all of you,” Hedvika said, as Kitty picked up one of their bags.

“Yeah, and same to you,” Ptolemy said.

“See you,” Nathaniel said, as they began to walk away.

Once they were out of earshot, Bartimaeus leaned in close, his eyes comically large. “I can’t believe it! Nat, you made a friend in a normal way! Oh how much you’ve grown.” He wiped away a fake tear.

“Oh, shut up,” Nathaniel muttered. The tips of his ears, just barely visible beneath his growing hair, turned pink. “I haven’t exactly had a lot of opportunities to make friends in the past.”

“Hey, well neither have the rest of us, so you’re not alone in that,” Kitty said.

“Now I feel offended,” Bartimaeus said. “Here I was, thinking I was all your friend.”

“Well, yeah, of course you are,” Ptolemy said. “But we didn’t exactly meet you the normal way.”

These  _ were _ her friends, Kitty realized with a start. It wasn’t surprising exactly, but somehow the fact had not sunken in until this moment. They were her friends in an entirely different way from Jakob who had been her friend because he was close and tolerated her stubborn personality, nor like the members of the Resistance who had been her friends because they had a common goal and their work required some level of trust and cooperation. 

In the two weeks she had lived with Nathaniel and Ptolemy, she had grown close enough with them that they were no longer practically strangers but something far more comfortable. Even Bartimaeus who had been gone most of the time had become more familiar through the others’ stories of him in some sort of secondhand friendship.

“Normal’s overrated,” Kitty said. “Not to diminish your social accomplishment, Nat—” Nathaniel made a face at her, “but I think I like this better.”

“Well, I could do with some things having gone differently,” Bartimaeus said as he put the groceries he was carrying into the trunk. “But if ‘normal’ takes me out of the picture, then screw that.”

Which was a sentiment Kitty could get behind. These were the people she had chosen, something she hadn’t really been able to do with the other people in her life. And she  _ wanted _ this, to live with them in their house and learn about their thoughts and past and create a place with them that she felt safe and content in, not because she had no one else or because it was convenient or because she didn’t know what else to do with her life, but because she  _ liked _ them.

It was a strangely novel concept, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. She had always been aware of stories where people found their one true love and they lived happily together, but that sort of thing had always seemed beyond her. 

Even if she was the kind of person to be satisfied with that sort of life, she knew that in reality, life was hard for commoners, full of working too hard for too little reward, stressing out about taxes and rent and the whimsies of an unpredictable world where a few dozen people could destroy the lives of nearly anyone they pleased with a snap of their fingers without so much as a slap on the hand.

It was too soon to say she had found love or stability, but for the first time in her life, it seemed like something she could hope for.


End file.
